So, TPF is ten years old, and with big thanks to Alex for organising things, we've had a couple of very enjoyable evenings in Porto to celebrate (and it's not over yet..)

A lot of things have happened over the past decade, but one very basic one is that the 70's are now as old as the 60's were a decade ago. That feels slightly surreal, because I think for most of us, our drinking habits in terms of vintages have pretty much stood still over the last ten years.

Indeed, if I look at the bottles of VP I drank at home in 2007, I can see that the average age was 28.5 years. Fast forward to 2016 and that age becomes 42.7 years, with 2017 on course to be around 44 years; so I've actually been going back in time, and not forward with the flow of production.

However, this is where I think the next ten years will be different. The '94s have been 'not quite ready' for a very long time now, as I established a series of 'minimum drinking ages' for my home consumption, first at 18 years, then 21, then 24 and now 24, but only for rare investigative forays, with bottles entering the mainstream at 30.

As I'm no longer tempted to put things back any further, that is where things will probably remain, so in another decade the 94's and 97's will have become regular drinkers, and the 00's and 03's will be getting the occasional visit.

To be honest, the prospect of decanting a 'red top' as I call my millennial stock* seems even more surreal, but I think it will eventually happen - probably...!

(*When I ran out of three digit case serial numbers, I started a new series with red coloured tag numbers for 2000 vintage and later)

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I shall be sober and you will still be ugly - W.S. Churchill